art education / CULTURAL PROJECTS

A selection of socially engaged/art education/cultural projects I have initiated and/or been involved in are shown here (first through images and described in words below).

Zooming in to zoom out artist peer-to-peer workshop - Bow Arts (2024). (Image 1). A workshop to reflect on individual artistic practices through mapping and diagramming.

We’re knackered - pausing for precarious workers - Antiuniversity (2023). (Image 2). A 1-hour (everyone is knackered so very important to get home in time for not-too-late dinner) workshop for workers on insecure contracts from any industry. We did an exercise to walk towards a kettle, pacing ourselves to arrive at the exact moment it boiled. We wrote time budget studies to see how we used our time on the previous work day and dissected it. At the end we did some random combination action-body part exercises.

Mapping Memories - The National Memorial Arboretum (2022-23). Commissioned by the NMA, Amy Leung, Rebecca Twiston-Davis and I proposed, developed and piloted five arts workshops based around mapping for national download and use. The maps created and stories shared through these workshops will form an archive chronicling the importance of green spaces during Covid-19 lockdowns. 

Drawing Conversations - Hackney Migrant and Refugee Forum (2022). (Images 3 and 4). A workshop to connect through drawing with a group of adult refugees from Hong Kong. The artists insisted on a full photo shoot with each other and their collaborative works afterwards -unfortunately I didn’t ask if I could share so no sharing of these proud portraits here but happy drawings of Alex and Candice can maybe translate the joy of the afternoon.

Included: How to support young people who face disadvantage to thrive online - Catch22 (2022). After initial research conversations, I co-led a 6-week programme of online co-design sessions with young people (aged 16-24) who had experience of school exclusion.

CoAir Video Share (2021). A proposal to use gallery façades as a threshold between the institution itself and the community it surrounds - suggesting it as an area to show short community-made films about the open and ambiguous subject of the in-between. The interactive pdf (images 5 and 6) guides the making of these videos.

How Might We Better Engage 11-16 Year-Olds in Smaller Gallery Spaces? (2020). Research project with Jo Roy and Liberty Dent for our Human Centred Design (IDEO/Acumen Academy) project. We conducted many interviews with young people, teachers, parents and experts that helped us to understand the experiences, opportunities and difficulties that this question brings up. This then went on to inform our idea/design that aims to better connect schools and galleries in England to support more long-term, sustained relationships.

Student Mental Health - Wellcome Trust (2019). I was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust to design and run a project about the “crisis” in student mental health in UK universities to illustrate Anna Lewis’ article. I led a group of 11 Graphic Design students from Manchester School of Art through a discussion workshop to explore the subject, followed by drawing conversation workshops to co-create the outcomes together. (Images 7 and 8).

Open Studio / Experimental Drawing Workshop - Marpha Foundation (2019). To share my practice with the local Marpha community,I showed some work-in-progress and the Kindergarten children tried out a tool I’d made to draw with your head. (Image 9).

Pioneering Places - Turner Contemporary (2018-9). A project exploring a child-led process with local Year 3 pupils, centred around Ramsgate Harbour. With a small delivery team (Babalola Yusuf, Lucy Pettet and myself), we led arts workshops both in and out of the classroom, punctuated by Philosophical Enquiry sessions. Over the course of the school year, this evolved to become a collaboration with the children: pushing ideas of art, the place they live and how it is experienced. (Images 10 and 11)

The Things We Don’t Notice Are How We Survive - Whitworth Gallery (2017). From research done at Ahvaland Print Workshop in the Åland Islands, I designed and led a series of exercises to examine and re-think how we experience living in a city, considering creativity beyond our brains and hands. (Images 12 and 13).

Little Light Nights Evaluation - The Brick Box (2015). Evaluation design and implementation for two public art events in London and Bradford. I did this as part of Studio Tej (with Kathryn Timmins). (Images 14 and 15).

The Fence (Studio Weave/Merton Council) (2013). Kathryn Timmins and I (Studio Tej) hand-painted a 30m long fence in Mitcham with a seasonal food chart. The information was gathered from the wonderful allotment owners on the other side of the fence. We drastically underestimated time and money, but in hindsight, it was possibly the best month of our lives. (Images 16, 17 and 18).

The Reading Room - Parlour Press (2010 - 2013). As part of artist book collective, Parlour Press, we set up a roaming reading room, taking it to back rooms of pubs (The Castle in Manchester and The Kenton in London) and the pier at Lytham St Annes to introduce new audiences to our work and artist books. Sometimes it was well received, other times it was difficult and pushed us to consider how to better engage audiences or if they even wanted to be engaged at all. (Images 19 and 20).

Brian (After Brian) (2010). As a bridge alternative, I invited local people from my home village of Grappenhall (near Warrington in North West England) to build a raft to sail across the Bridgewater Canal. A man named Brian was instrumental to it’s success so we named it in his honour. (Images 21 and 22)

Droog Lab (2010). I did an internship at Droog Lab for 6 months in 2010 where myself, Kartin Murbach and Daniella Dossi sat in a lime green attic room, researching Pond Inlet (in the Canadian Arctic) and presented this research bi-weekly to the project’s invited artists/designers. Much to my disappointment, I did not get to go to the Arctic. This book gives an overview of the 8 projects that formed Droog Lab over the course of 4 years (2010-14). (Image 23).